Dandelions contain the same diaretic as gout medicine and so for my diabetic mother who has gout I dried some dandelions and made her drink the tea! We checked with doctors first and this is what I would recommend anyone else doing.

The tea appears to be working; mum even took Jean for a couple of walks up and down the drive, which with gout should have been too painful. Then she decided she wouldn’t drink anymore becuause it made her need the loo (something dad suffered too but Al and me didn’t?). As a result of not drinking the tea, the next day her gout flared up and she was in lots of pain.

I found that the best tasting brew was created by chopping the dried roots up but leaving the leaves whole. The leaves were dried too. I put the equivalent of a 5cm- long by 5mm (sorry about the units) diameter root into a tea pot, per person. This is 2/3rds of the mix, the remaining third being the leaves.

It needs quiet a lot of brewing/steeping, so a tea cosy is useful (I have a Rrastarfarian- looking one that Al’s aunt gave us -– I love it!). Honey is also good as a sweetener in it. I only served small coffee cups of the stuff.

Barbara (Al’s aunt) gave us some of her aspaeragus which grows in abundance in the garden. – It was about enough to serve steamed as a starter for one and a half people so I decided to soup it!

I boiled it up then poured it and and the boiling water into the blender, adding a veggy stock cube and a paint of milk (goat’s milk becuause that’s what I had in the fridge at the time). I then cheated and use dried chopped garlic -– about a tea spoon full and crushed fennel seeeds, again about 1 teaspoon full too flavour it with. It was, however, a thin, insubstantial soup, so out came the corn flour, and the soup rapidly thickened.

It was lovely and filling, and as always, I had accidentally made enough for four people -– oh well, Jean loves it too, which is good, as she’s getting it again tomorrow!

I had par boiled a lot of it all ready, to roast and put in with the left over roast veg (these had been roasted in sunflower oil with rosemarry and pepper). I had also kept the water as a veg stock, which I then boiled everything up in that hadn’t yet been par boiled. These were the potatoes (for some reason there are never any roasted potatoes left after the meals reguardless of how many I cook?), butternut and courgette.

Then we blend the whole lot! Bzzzzzzzzzz!

Into the suaucepan about a quarter of it went, along with the garlic crushed, and fennel seeds, – also crushed. I also drizzled about 1/2 a tbl spoon of pumpkin seed oil into it and ground in some pepper in (using our phallic pepper grinder from an Italian restruarent!). Add the fennel seeds and away we go!

Oh and don’t forget to add a pint of milk -– I use a 50:50 mix of semi skimmed goat’s and skimmed cow’s milk but that’s becausecos of special dietary requirrements and should be fine what ever you use. It would probably be tasty just with a pint of veg stock instead!

Gently heat until the odd bubble starts to appear, try not to let boil! This allows the garlick and fennel to permeate the soup properly.

I had it on the heat for about 1/2 hr.

Be warned, me and Al and I have had this two days in a row and I have frozen enough (without garlick, fennel and milk) to feed 6 people a thick soup and 10 people a thickish soup!

Jean (who was just weaning at the time being our baby) also loves this but she had it mixed with mash potato.

Ok, on the cooking front I have learnedt two valuable lesasons this week: 1) When making a sponge don’t use the electric whisk as the cake collapses, and 2) Ddon’t try and soup Protein Chunk Gunk unless you like mineistronei- type soups, and even then beware!

p.s. Al ate the soup!

p.p.s. Protein Chunk Gunk is the turn I put to a stuff containing soya chunks that have been dried and reconstituted by being soaked for half a day.